2024-09-28 00:10:21
While the Ukrainian military’s seizure of land in Kursk is attracting attention hundreds of kilometers further north, the strategically just as important battle is taking place in the Black Sea – a battle that Ukraine has so far won against all odds with British help. This is demonstrated not only by the numerous attacks on Russian warships, in which Ukraine managed to destroy a significant part of Putin’s Black Sea Fleet and forced the Russian Navy to relocate its contingents.
When Ukrainian special forces drove the Russians from Snake Island on June 30, 2022, four months after the invasion, they secured the country a corridor for grain exports from the port of Odessa. Last September, Ukraine took control of a number of oil platforms that are now used as a base for attacks on Russian targets in Crimea. The Russians’ clearance of the Kinburn Peninsula and Tendra Spit was also crucial to the release of Ukraine’s second largest seaport, Mykolaiv.
Alex tells the Times how risky the divers’ missions are. Once they started swimming in a group of four, but two of their colleagues had to turn around. The other two continued swimming and soon encountered an entire battalion of Russian troops. “At least 500 soldiers,” as Alex says. The objective of their mission was to take out a Russian ZSU-23-4 Shilka self-propelled armored anti-aircraft system. The system was of strategic importance to the Russians. For the two Ukrainian specialists, it was a matter of avoiding detection on enemy terrain. If anyone had raised the alarm, they would have been captured or killed. “That’s why it’s so important to complete the task as unobtrusively as possible, without signs, signals, communication or thermal signatures, without losing the element of surprise,” says Alex.
But they were able to complete their mission, install an explosive device with a remote detonator on the anti-aircraft defense system and disappear again undetected: “We saw the vehicle blow up and also the ammunition that was in it. There was a crew in the vehicle “We probably killed eight to ten Russians.”